Military

DATE=01/11/02

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

NUMBER=2-285126

TITLE=U-N AID / AFGHANISTAN (L ONLY)

BYLINE=DALE GAVLAK

DATELINE=GENEVA

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Though the Taleban rulers have been put out of power and the fighting in Afghanistan has subsided, United Nations aid agencies say thousands of Afghans are still fleeing their homes. V-O-A's Dale Gavlak has more from Geneva, where many of the U-N agencies have their headquarters.

TEXT: There are already over 100-thousand Afghan refugees in camps in Pakistan, and the United Nation's refugee agency says more want to get in.

U-N-H-C-R spokesman Kris Janowski says a combination of a lack of food and fear for their lives has sent thousands of Afghans fleeing from the Kandahar area to the Pakistan border.

/// JANOWSKI ACT///

We now have seven thousand people stuck in no man's land trying to get into Pakistan, and the main reason these people are leaving is the lack of aid. They are also speaking of banditry, attacks and general insecurity in that part of the country.

/// END ACT ///

The World Food Program says it has been impossible to provide aid to the Kandahar province for many weeks because of fighting there.

Other parts of the country are also suffering from a lack of food. The agency says it is planning to send food by helicopter to the mountainous Bonawash region in northern Afghanistan, where people have reportedly been eating grass to survive.

W-F-P spokeswoman Christiane Bertiaume says the agency hopes to send helicopters to other difficult-to-reach places in Afghanistan where fighting has stopped. But she says the agency only uses helicopters when it has no alternative.

/// BERTIAUME ACT ///

The problem is that you cannot bring as much by helicopters as by road or even by donkey. But if the needs are very important we will do our best to respond to them as quickly as possible.

/// END ACT ///

Ms. Bertiaume says the W-F-P is also looking into reports of humanitarian aid being looted in eastern Afghanistan, around the city of Jalalabad. She says the agency is working to ensure that all its food deliveries get to people in need, not looters. (Signed)

NEB/DG/KL/MAR